Photographers Share Snapshots Of Final Days Of Closed Philadelphia Schools

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Forty-five million dollars may be coming to the School District of Philadelphia from the state, but it doesn’t reopen the nearly two dozen schools that are now closed.

Wednesday night, a group of photographers put their work on display at an exhibit dedicated to those schools and the communities they were in.

They’re known as the “Philadelphia School Closing Photo Collective.” Some of their work was on display at the Scribe Video Center in West Philadelphia. One was of a teacher packing her things at John L. Kinsey Elementary in West Oak Lane. It was Melissa Holman’s black-and-white snapshot of the last, last day of school:

“This was the first teacher I met and we talked at length and she was busy packing and she was pretty distraught. She had a couple of students come in and say goodbye,” she said.

Tishka Smith had a shot of the final block party at Bok Tech.

“So the idea was to kind of capture that bittersweet mood,” she said.

Also taking pictures at Bok, Katrina Ohstrom, who can’t forget what she saw through her lens:

“Witnessing interactions between the students and their teachers, their principal, even their school police officers. It was really really impressive.”

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Tim Jimenez is a general assignment reporter at KYW Newsradio 1060.
Tim, a native of Lansdale, Pa., is a proud Temple University alumnus.
He began his career as an intern at NBC 10 in the consumer alert department. From there he came to KYW...